Beyond online: important genealogy guidebooks for your shelves

This past weekend I promised the audience at the South Dakota state archives that I would post a list of some basic genealogy guidebooks that are important to beginning and even more advanced researchers. If you are only checking online resources and yet wondering what else there might be, these guides will fill you with tons of ideas and places to look. This is not a list of all that is available

1.    Croom, Emily Anne. Unpuzzling Your Past. 4th Ed. “Expanded, Updated and Revised.” Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2010.

2.    Eichholz, Alice, ed. Ancestry's Red Book: American State, County and Town Sources. 3d ed. Provo, UT: Ancestry Publishing, 2004 [Overview guide to all of the states. [Online edition is part of Ancestry’s free Wiki <www.ancestry.com/wiki>.]


3.    Greenwood, Val D. The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy. 3d ed. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2000.

4.    Hinckley, Kathleen W. Your Guide to the Federal Census. Cincinnati: Betterway Books, 2002. [Includes case studies, appendices, glossary, forms, hints, and more. The best census guide! Out of print but in many libraries.]

5.    Morgan, George. How to Do Everything Genealogy. 3d ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. [Update will be out in 2015!]

6.    Rose, Christine and Kay Ingalls. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Genealogy. 3rd ed. New York: Alpha Books, 2012.

7.    Szucs, Loretto Dennis and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, eds. The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. 3rd ed. Provo, UT: Ancestry, 2006. Now online at Ancestry's wiki <www.ancestry.com/wiki>